‘The Real Data Set’: A Case of Challenging Power Dynamics and Questioning the Boundaries of Research Production

Abstract

While the co-production of knowledge through community-engaged research is intended to be a reciprocally beneficial process, academic institutions have often devalued community expertise by treating community organizations as subjects rather than co-creators of knowledge. Drawing from ethnographic work with a community-based organization (CBO), Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), this paper shows how one CBO is challenging and critiquing these long-standing power dynamics between community and their university partners. LA CAN centered community expertise and formed long-term mutual relationships based on shared values, primarily an abolitionist framework and connection to Black Radical Thought. Drawing from LA CAN’s partnerships and their definition of power, we discuss how shifting power dynamics and centering community expertise leads to a different form of knowledge production, resulting in “the real data set”. This case shows how CBOs are movement researchers who are central to creating and interpreting theory.